Seattle skyline wins Bing ‘hometown pride’ photo contest

This photograph of the Seattle skyline won the second Bing homepage-photo contest. It will be featured as Bing’s background image on Jan. 6.

This photograph of the Seattle skyline, taken by local photographer Justin Kraemer, will be featured as the Bing homepage photo on Jan. 6. It was the winning entry among hundreds of submissions to Microsoft’s second such contest.

The Bing team called him Monday morning to tell him he was the winner. The photo was one of 20 finalists, which Microsoft posted to its Bing photo-contest Facebook application. Users voted for their favorite photos, and Kraemer said his entry was leading the whole time.

Kraemer said he will go to Redmond on Tuesday to meet with the Bing team and talk about how the photo will be displayed on the search engine. Microsoft pins fact bubbles to its homepage photos, which users can mouse over to learn about the photograph.

The contest theme was “hometown pride,” and Kraemer’s Seattle photo won over entries from overseas places like France, Spain and New Zealand, Microsoft said. The other finalists are viewable on Facebook.

And what, besides bragging rights, did Kraemer win?

“No monetary compensation,” he said, “just hoping to get some exposure and sell some prints.”

Kraemer works as the athletic director for a Boys & Girls Club in Mukilteo. He said he has been doing photography in the area for about two years, and just recently started to try selling his work.